And a still more wondrous advance was in the minds of men; it was at hand--an advance to a point where steel forts were to be sent afloat in place of the ships that were in 1859 the pride of naval seamen. [Illustration: The _Minnesota_ as a Receiving Ship. _From a photograph by Rau._] Remarkable as it seems to the present-day student of naval history, the changes in naval ships that produced the _Minnesota_ before the year 1859--even the changes that gave us the steel fort afloat--were foreshadowed in 1813 when the immortal Fulton made plans for a ship of war that should not only be propelled by steam, but should be as impregnable to the guns of that day as were the ironclads of 1862 to the guns of their day. [Illustration: A Loop-pattern Gun of 1836--a Type which Runs back over 100 Years.] Although this ship was designed in 1813, she was not sent afloat until October 29, 1814, and even then, although swifter and more convenient than Fulton had promised that she should be--although she was the very craft that on a smooth-water day could meet and destroy the insolent blockading squadron then off Sandy Hook--she was not put into commission immediately, and the war came to an end before there was opportunity to show what steam might do for the sea power of a nation. [Illustration: A Thirty-two-pounder from the Captured _Macedonian_--now at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. _From a photograph._] But because this was the first steam warship the world ever saw, and because, when sent on trial trips, she more than fulfilled every promise of her designer, it is worth while giving a full description of her. Her length was 150 feet; breadth, 56 feet; depth, 20 feet; water-wheel, 16 feet diameter; length of bucket, 14 feet; dip, 4 feet; engine, 48-inch cylinder, 5-feet stroke; boiler, length, 22 feet; breadth, 12 feet; and depth, 8 feet; tonnage, 2,475. She was the largest steamer by many hundreds of tons that had been built at the date of her launch. The commissioners appointed to examine her, in their report say: